


The Brother's Sub-Zero

by generalasshattery



Category: Mortal Kombat - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Brotherhood, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23479297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/generalasshattery/pseuds/generalasshattery
Summary: Written as a request on Tumblr, this is about Kuai Liang reflecting on his relationship with his brother.
Kudos: 15





	The Brother's Sub-Zero

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for @Assassiyun on tumblr, and is major angst warning.

It wasn’t so long after his return to life that Kuai Liang found himself in a position he’d never been in before. For the first time in memory, Sub Zero was truly beholden to no one. His entire life had been in service to the Lin Kuei, and in death he found the depths of servitude could reach beyond the scope of his imagination. It was painful to think about it, all of it really. The clan he’d loved had betrayed him, turned him into a machine to force him to abide their will, only to be freed of it long enough to lose his free will once more. A different man might have been enraged, and bitter being denied the opportunity for revenge, but for Kuai Liang there was only a sense of loss. And there was much he had lost, not just years of free will, but the life he knew, the innocent way he’d seen the clan, and his brother.

His brother. Bi-han. The original claimant to the Sub Zero title, a man who could be both so much like Kuai and yet so very different. It was perhaps that loss that motivated his first true action of free will, of self interest. An action that benefitted no one but himself, a mission, a goal, a quest to find a missing piece of his life that had been taken from him before he knew it existed.

Bi-han had known of it though, the part of their world before their father stole them back to the Lin Kuei. He’d known their mother’s face, her personality... her love. But Bi-han would never share that with Kuai, one of many things that had gone forever undiscussed between the two, and would forever more. But he was no longer dependent on an elder brother for that, nor anyone else, and so the younger Sub Zero embarked to find his mother. He wasn’t so hopeful or idealistic that he expected to find good news, but he had hoped for something better than what he found.

What he found was a grave, cold and overgrown, a handful of pictures, and the knowledge that despite the lies from his father, she’d never quit looking for him. He’d wondered staring at the pictures how people of a different stock would handle that sort of knowledge. Did people growing up surrounded by love and comfort react with that hollowness in their chest and a burning in their eyes? He only wondered because staring at the pictures, he realized how easily he could have been one of them. How easily it could have been them.

The first picture was taken on a sunny day, his mother’s lovely face smiling for the camera, one arm holding a young boy, the other cradling her clearly pregnant belly. The young boy, who he would’ve known to be Bi-han anywhere if only for that grimly serious expression, had one hand pressed against the belly as well. Something about that hit his chest hard, and it took his brain a few seconds to be able to articulate to him why that was so painful. This moment, before Kuai was even part of the world, and his older brother was expressing a connection. A connection that Kuai had never been certain, until this moment, had ever even existed.

His earliest memories of his elder brother were as icy as their abilities. He couldn’t really remember a moment of genuine warmth passing between them, he’d tried so hard to please or impress his brother but had always been met with coldness. He can remember the feelings, those strong feelings of needing his brother, but receiving nothing in kind. But looking at this picture made him realize a grim truth, if his brother had given him that attention, that affection, that it would have made them a target in the Lin Kuei. He didn’t know if that meant his brother had been trying to spare him, or if Bi-han hadn’t cared in the first place. Once he would’ve leaned towards the latter, but now staring at that picture he didn’t feel so certain.

The next picture had Kuai Liang properly in it, cradled in his brother’s lap, it was taken on a cheap looking couch with a light blue wall in the background. Bi-han didn’t look so serious in this one, an expression that dared to be almost soft on the little boy’s face with a small smile that still managed to be bigger than one he’d ever seen from his brother. So that connection had still existed after Kuai was born, there’d been affection at least for a little while. His vision got a little blurry and for a moment Kuai debated letting a few tears fall, but instead he blinked them away. The pain in his chest grew deeper, and a darkness clouded his brain as he had to wonder what had this experience been like for Bi-han, who was old enough to know what it was like when his whole world changed?

“Quit asking about her, she doesn’t care enough to find us,” he could recall Bi-han saying once when Kuai had once again questioned about their mother. It had been an obsession for many years, the question no one would ever answer. His father had shut down any attempt to gather information, and Bi-han always got mad. Angry enough a few times to lash out. An anger strong enough that it was covering for a deep, that was something he’d figured out years before. Even Bi-han couldn’t hide a wound that deep forever.

Briefly he considered how it would’ve made Bi-han feel to know she hadn’t given up on them. Would that have soothed him, or only deepened the pain? Or would it even have mattered to him as an adult? Though, by adulthood he would’ve surely known that there was nothing she could have done anyway. Would her death have been enough to elicit some feelings from him? Bi-han had seemed to divorce himself so thoroughly from his emotions, that it was hard to tell what, if anything, he actually felt. Occasionally there may be a glimmer of something, but that was almost never something he’d turned on Kuai. Those emotions were reserved for lovers, or allies in missions, never Kuai.

And then something clicked, like a hidden piece of knowledge he’d been waiting to uncover. Bi-han knew what it meant to lose someone he loved and perhaps there was no small amount of desire on his part to not re-experience that pain. Bi-han has trusted Kuai, that much Kuai knew, even if they weren’t close. Not with secrets or personal information, but with tasks or on missions. As a teenager he’d clung to that as proof of some form of bond between them, as he gotten older he’d discarded it to mean that Bi-han had simply known Kuai was too eager to please him. Now he was certain it was a little of both.

These pictures couldn’t alleviate Bi-han of who he was, and the man’s sins and cruel acts were bountiful. This didn’t suddenly allow him to easily forgive a life time of isolation, or excuse any of the actions Bi-han had taken against others. Still, there was something undeniably healing in knowing that he hadn’t been hopelessly waiting for big brother to care all those years. So he moved on to the next picture, the last one he had.

It was the family in its entirety, their mother and father and the two sons at dinner together. But the thing that made this one so different was the smile, not a controlled and small smile, not a smirk, but an honest grin from Bi-han. He was laughing, laughing at the mess on Kuai’s face. And then he felt something hot roll down his cheeks, hot for all of a moment before it turned cold enough to crystallize. Icy tears had made it half way down the face as he realized that they’d both lost something so very precious.

Here he was staring at the proof of a loving life that went unlived. A life full of happy memories, and all the comforts of a home and a family that had been denied both of them. That had been stolen from them, and for the first time he could really remember he was enraged, he was upset, he was hurt, and the pain just kept getting worse. He didn’t know if he hated the man now, but he could say that he was angry with his father. Because like the Lin Kuei had done in turning him into a machine, his father had betrayed him by turning him into a Lin Kuei assassin.

No, he’d done that to both of them. Both he and Bi-han had been betrayed, and his brother had the memory of it happening. There was nothing to be done for it now, no one but Kuai Liang in the picture still lived. That was a lonely thought to have, especially now, so wrapped up in these painful revelations. He wished he could show Bi-han, to tell him what had been revealed, even if the elder brother didn’t care. He would’ve cared.

Bi-han would’ve cared, and for some reason he knew that deeply. He may not have liked knowing, he may not have reacted with any amount of emotion, but he would’ve cared. He knew that because he knew Bi-han after the man had died, when he really, truly, and deeply did not care. When the ability to care had been deprived of him. That Bi-han was different, and the fact he was meant something.

But it didn’t matter, there was no one to show any of this to, not even his former friends. There was no one left to confide in or express any of this to. And for the briefest moment he wondered if it meant that any of this didn’t really matter. He could banish that thought, because it did. Bi-han and their mother mattered to Kuai, and even if no one else in the world knew about it, that didn’t make it less important.

So he took the pictures, slipped them into his pocket knowing he was going to have to find a place to keep them safe. Knowing that he had no where else to go, he went back to the only place that had ever been home to him. It stood then abandoned and empty, halls where pain had once been common, the Lin Kuei temple. It was just a building now, but it didn’t have to be what it was. Something to ponder when he was healed, for now it could just be his home.


End file.
